Suburban Sublime

Statement

The project Suburban Sublime situates a mystical narrative within suburbia. Suburbia is a seemingly bland and uneventful place. Yet paradoxically, this banality can incubate something curious and wondrous, such as the luminous events depicted in these images. Is it supernatural? Threatening? Dangerous? That remains to be seen. The sublime can be found within the depths of the paradox.

The images in this series are made by photographing dioramas, which are themselves built from photographs. Through the play of light on velum, atmospheric effects are created in front of the lens. The buildings and places depicted are no longer specimens of suburbia; they become visual koans, requiring an imaginative leap to resolve initial perceptions. This work explores the ambiguity between photographic expectation and neo-pictorialist space, signification and abstraction, and the real versus the uncanny